AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents

Blocked Delivery Emails Mentioning www.DearAOL.com

San Francisco - This week, AOL blocked delivery to AOL
customers of all emails that include a link to
www.DearAOL.com. Over 100 people who signed a petition to
AOL tried sending messages to their AOL-using friends, and
received a bounce-back message informing them that their
email "failed permanently."

"The fact is, ISPs like AOL commonly make these kinds of
arbitrary decisions every day - silently banning huge
swathes of legitimate mail on the flimsiest of reasons -
and no one hears about it," said Danny O'Brien, Activism
Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
"AOL's planned CertifiedEmail system would let it profit
from this power by offering to charge legitimate mailers to
bypass these malfunctioning filters."

After the original version of this press release was sent
out Thursday afternoon, AOL stopped blocking email with
links to www.DearAOL.com. This incident only increases our
worry about organizations that don't have the ability to
seek instant press attention. The next time AOL's anti-spam
filters fail for a small organization - or one without
political muscle - will they move so quickly to fix them?
Or will they push organizations to just sign up with
Goodmail and pay to avoid the problem?

When reports of undelivered email started rolling in to the
DearAOL.com Coalition, MoveOn co-founder Wes Boyd decided to
see for himself if it was true.

"I tried to email my brother-in-law about DearAOL.com, and
AOL sent me a response as if he had disappeared," said Boyd.
"But when I sent him an email without the DearAOL.com link,
it went right through."

While AOL may imply that censoring www.DearAOL.com is part
of some anti-spam effort, its own customers are witnessing
how faulty AOL's spam measures would be if that were the
case.

"I forwarded www.DearAOL.com to my own AOL account and it
was censored. Apparently I can't even tell myself about
it," said Kelly Tessitore from Framingham, Massachusetts.

"This proves the DearAOL.com Coalition's point entirely:
left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self-
interest ahead of the public interest in a free and open
Internet," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free
Press, a national, nonpartisan organization working on media
reform and Internet policy issues. "AOL wants us to believe
they won't hurt free email when their pay-to-send system is
up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of
information now to silence their critics, how could anyone
trust that they will preserve the free and open Internet
down the road? Their days of saying 'trust us' are over -
their credibility is zero, zip, nada."

The DearAOL.com Coalition represents over 15 million people
combined - and has grown from 50 member organizations to
600 in a month. Since the beginning of the DearAOL.com
campaign, more than 350,000 Internet users have signed
letters to AOL opposing its pay to send proposal. Coalition
members include craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the
Association of Cancer Online Resources, EFF, Free Press, the
AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, and
others.

For more on the issues surrounding pay-to-send email, join
EFF for a debate on April 20 in San Francisco. EFF's
O'Brien and tech expert Esther Dyson will face off over the
question "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?" Entrepreneur and
EFF cofounder Mitch Kapor will moderate.

In light of AOL's adopting a "certified" email system, EFF
is hosting a debate on the future of email. With
distinguished entrepreneur Mitch Kapor moderating, EFF
Activist Coordinator Danny O'Brien and renowned tech expert
Esther Dyson will discuss the potential consequences if
people have to pay to send email. Would the Internet
deteriorate as a platform for free speech? Would spam or
phishing decline?

WHEN:
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

WHAT:

"Email - Should the Sender Pay?"

WHO:

Danny O'Brien

Danny O'Brien is the Activist Coordinator for the EFF. His
job is to help our membership in making their voice heard:
in government and regulatory circles, in the marketplace,
and with the wider public. Danny has documented and fought
for digital rights in the UK for over a decade, where he
also assisted in building tools of open democracy like Fax
Your MP. He co-edits the award-winning NTK newsletter, has
written and presented science and travel shows for the BBC,
and has performed a solo show about the Net in the London's
West End.

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is editor of Release 1.0, CNET's quarterly
technology-industry newsletter, and host of its PC Forum,
the high-tech market's leading annual executive conference.
She sold her business, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks
in early 2004. Previously, she had co-owned EDventure and
written/edited Release 1.0 since 1983. She was also an
early board member of EFF and was our chairman from July
1995 to January 1998, and was founding chairman of ICANN
(1998-2000). The author of the book "Release 2.0: A design
for living in the digital age," which suggested a sender-
pays model for e-mail in 1997, Dyson also recently wrote a
New York Times op-ed called "You've Got Goodmail,"
supporting a voluntary recipient-charges/sender-pays model
for email.

Mitch Kapor

Mitchell Kapor is the President and Chair of the Open Source
Applications Foundation, a non-profit organization he
founded in 2001 to promote the development and acceptance of
high-quality application software developed and distributed
using open source methods and licenses. He is widely known
as the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the
designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" that made
the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in
the 1980's. In 1990, Kapor co-founded EFF. Mitch will
moderate the debate.

Public Parking is available on Hoff Street, off of 16th
between Valencia and Mission at very reasonable rates.

This fundraiser is open to the general public. The
suggested donation is $20.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Please RSVP to events@eff.org

Adaptive Path is the generous sponsor of this fundraising
event. Founded in 2001, Adaptive Path is a leading user
experience consulting, research, and training firm that has
provided services to a range of clients, including Fortune
100 corporations, pure-Web startups, and established
nonprofit organizations. The company is headquartered in
San Francisco. To learn more about Adaptive Path, visit the
company website at:
http://www.adaptivepath.com

Digital Copyright Law Hurts Consumers, Scientists, and
Competition

EFF Report Highlights More Unintended Consequences in Seven
Years of DMCA

San Francisco - In the seven years since Congress enacted
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), examples of the
law's impact on legitimate consumers, scientists, and
competitors continue to mount. A new report released this
week from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF),
"Unintended Consequences: Seven Years Under the DMCA,"
collects reports of the misuses of the DMCA -- chilling free
expression and scientific research, jeopardizing fair use,
impeding competition and innovation, and interfering with
other laws on the books. The report updates a previous
version issued by EFF in 2003.

The report tells the story of the delay of the disclosure of
the Sony BMG "rootkit" vulnerabilities on millions of music
CDs. The dangerous software flaws were initially discovered
by Princeton graduate student J. Alex Halderman. But
Halderman delayed sounding the alarm about the security
problems for several weeks so he could consult with lawyers
about potential violations of the DMCA. The report also
details the DMCA's role in impeding RealNetworks from
selling digital music to Apple iPod owners, along with other
unintended consequences from the DMCA.

"Rather than being used to stop 'piracy,' the DMCA has
predominantly been used to threaten and sue legitimate
consumers, scientists, publishers, and competitors," said
EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann. "This law is
not being used as Congress intended, and a review of the
past seven years makes it clear that reform is needed."

E-Voting Lobby Days a Resounding Success

Last week, hundreds of citizen lobbyists joined leading
election integrity advocates in Washington, DC, to show
their support for safe and auditable elections. The "I
Count" Coalition," which includes EFF, Common Cause,
Verified Voting, Voters Unite, VoteTrustUSA, and Working
Assets, led the lobbying effort in support of HR 550 -- the
Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. This bill
would ensure a voter-verified paper record of every vote,
establish mandatory random hand-counted audits, and prohibit
the use of secret software and wireless communications in
voting machines.

The Lobby Days event was a resounding success. New
endorsements came from Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL), Rep. John
Shimkus (R-IL), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Lucille
Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Rep. Tim Holden (D-PA), Rep. Jim Leach
(R-IA), Rep. Steven Lynch (D-MA), Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY),
Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Rep. Jim
Gerlach (R-PA). The number of co-sponsors of the House bill
now stands at 178. The bill needs 218 cosponsors to go
before the full House and out of committee where it has been
held up since its introduction.

"These new bipartisan co-sponsors demonstrate that the issue
of transparent elections doesn't belong solely to Democrats
or Republicans," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman.
"Making election technology work in an open and verifiable
way is a goal we should all share. It's refreshing to see
that message continues to gain momentum."

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